range transport of animals and culling of livestock were used to control the spread of the disease. But vaccination was not used during the 2001 outbreak. Keeling and his colleagues, who reported their findings in the journal Nature, said their strategy has the advantage of rapidly targeting any new focus of infection. Both Britain and the European Union have since proposed reactive vaccination as a preferred means of controlling a foot and mouth outbreak. But the scientists said neither suggests a specific design for vaccination programmes. "Although culling of animals on infected and at-risk holdings is still required, properly implemented, this control policy could have reduced the number of farms affected during the major epidemic in the UK in 2001 by around 75 percent," said Professor Mark Woolhouse of the University of Edinburgh who worked on the study.
